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カテゴリー1： 8. Schools, Groups, and Personalities
カテゴリー2： Personalities
Title
Maruyama Sakura
Text (184-99)
Politician and literary figure of the Meiji period. Born on the third day of the tenth month of 1840 at the Shimabara domain residence of Matsudaira Tadakazu in the Shibamita Shikokumachi district of Edo. His father was Maruyama Masanao. In 1858 he dedicated himself as a posthumous disciple of Hirata Atsutane, and thenceforth was active as a leader of the sonnō jōi (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians) movement in his home domain, until he was arrested and imprisoned in 1866. In 1868 he regained his freedom, as part of the movement for the restoration of Imperial rule, known as ōsei fukko. He was appointed Provisional Magistrate (gon-hanji) at the Jingikan (Department of Divinities) in the fifth month of 1869, and subsequently served as assistant to the vice head court representative (kōgisho fukugichō) and as Vice Minister at the Lower House of Representatives.
In the eighth month of that year he was made Senior Secretary (taijō) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was dispatched to Sakhalin to negotiate with Russian authorities. In the third month of 1871, however, Maruyama was dismissed from his official posts on suspicion of conspiring to overthrow the government of Korea, and in the fifth month of the following year he was taken into custody. He was granted amnesty in January 1880 and released from his sentence. In 1882 he came into conflict with the democratic rights political movement (Minkenha), which led him to organize the Imperial Constitutional Government Party (Rikken Teiseitō).
He was appointed assistant head librarian of the Imperial Household Ministry (Kunaishō) in 1886; in June 1890 he became a member of the Council of Elders (Genrōin), and in September he was appointed member of the House of Peers (Kizoku'in), and became active as an adviser in the efforts to re-establish the Department of Divinities. Maruyama died August, 19th, 1899, at the age of sixty.

- Akimoto Nobuhide

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